It is well known in the art to provide shower curtains for retaining water in a confined area. The conventional shower curtain is in the form of a plastic sheet which is suspended from a horizontal curtain rod via curtain rings. When closed over the entrance/exit to the shower or bathtub, the shower curtain functions to prevent water spillage outside of the shower. This prior art design suffers from the disadvantage that the curtain has a tendency to billow around the person who is showering, such that the bottom and side edges of the curtain part from the shower enclosure and allow water to escape, causing spillage, etc.
In an effort to overcome this problem, some shower curtains have been designed with magnets disposed in the bottom or hem edge. However, this solution does not work with plastic or other non-magnetic bathtubs.
It is also known in the art to provide sliding glass doors for enclosing showers and bathtubs. However, the sliding glass door units are of expensive and complex construction, and can be unwieldy in use due to the extreme weight of the glass.
Both of the prior art plastic curtain and glass door enclosures suffer from the additional significant disadvantage that the usable space in the shower is limited generally to the width of the bathtub, since the curtain or glass door forms a substantially vertical plane at the entrance/exit edge of the bathtub.
Additional prior art enhancements to shower curtain design are known which do not address the disadvantage discussed above relating to the lack of usable shower space. For example, U.S. Pat. No. 4,202,059 (Faragher, Jr.) discloses a reversible shower curtain of two-sheet laminated design; U.S. Pat. No. 3,895,399 (Giarrante) discloses an upstanding corner flange spray diverter for use in combination with a conventional shower curtain; U.S. Pat. No. 3,321,781 (Reich) discloses a shower curtain with reinforcing plastic strips; U.K. Patent Application GB 2,105,645 (The Croydex Company) discloses a method of ultrasonic welding of a nylon sheet shower curtain to form reinforced holes thereby eliminating the necessity of using metal eyelets; and French Patent Application 81 19796 (Deveze) discloses a shelf structure which is adapted to be suspended from a shower curtain rod on the inside of a shower curtain.